I have a legitimate question about the crackdown on talking about eating meat on this forum, which should not be viewed as making fun in any way. My question has a solid basis in facts and I'd like it if I could get it answered.
The taboo seems to stem from the idea that we don't want to have any discussion regarding eating something that was once alive and had a future in front of it. But more and more I'm seeing, from what appears to be this totally vegetarian standpoint, characters like Onion-chan and the potato named Potante. These are vegetables, the kind of vegetables, theoretically that you all eat, since you're not eating meat.
I mean, things like Potante actually speak more verbosely than the cows do. Wouldn't that make it WORSE to eat potatoes? Where do you draw the line?
You're missing the underlying and far more important ideology, Hazard: It is not the eating of meat or things that were once alive and had futures ahead of them, but the eating of beings that experienced conscious thought, beings that that felt, beings that could be hurt. It is the taking of conscious existence that is so particularly loathsome and forbidden in this forum.
Eating the meat of an animal, a being, signifies the devouring of what had been a conscious being until life was taken from that being. That is the stem, so to speak, of that rule. It runs deeper than just an animal or a plant, but the depriving of life to a being of conscious thought: of murder.
To address some of Hazard's questions: Potante is a special case, as are some xebnaxian potatoes. There are different kinds of potatoes on xebnax, one race of which is actual thinking, living beings, and the other race of which is simply a root vegetable that is edible. Onionchan was a special case and was probably not living and aware the same way as you or I may think of it, but onionchan served a very distinct purpose that was sensed at the time. Onionchan wanted to give its energy to nourish, not to be destroyed by Wart's callous foot stomping on it. And Onionchan got to do just that by helping revitalise the world that was ravaged by Psama, just as it would've by contributing to Wart's defeat were it thrown into his gaping maw. I hope that makes these situations a little clearer and easier to understand.